language and social groups Flashcards
(7 cards)
Leslie Milroy - Social network theory
Proposes that social networks and the interactions between members are a driving force behind how we use language as individuals. They are composed of a ‘web of ties’ between individuals and the structure of a network will vary depending on the types of connections it is composed of.
Open network - an individual whose contacts tend not to know each other
Closed network - an individual whose contacts all know each other.
Density - number of connections within a network
Multiplexity - the number of ways in which two individuals know each other
Leslie Milroy - Northern Ireland Study
Three inner city working class communities in northern Ireland
found that variations in language use could be explained by the residents’ social networks
Where people had a high network density score, their accents were reinforced and stayed strong while those that were isolated had less strong accents.
Where men were the ones who were isolated as one community had a lot of male unemployment, their accents were weaker than those of women. For women speakers, the strong ties within communities were powerfully associated with their density and maintaining a strong accent was a way of demonstrating and affirming this sense of themselves. There is nothing necessarily gender based about accent strength.
Penelope Eckert 2003 - teen speak
Typical use of certain language features among teenagers include:
Like and okay as fillers
Rising intonation
Multiple negation (ain’t done nothing)
However, she assures that not all adolescents speak the same - differences among adolescents are far greater than speech differences in any other age groups.
Jocks - a group who participated in school life enthusiastically. They were more interested in speaking in a socially prestigious way.
Burnouts - a group who were actively rebellious and refused to take part in school activities.
Vivian de Klerk - Teen Speak
Young people have the freedom to challenge linguistic norms
They seek to establish new identities
The patterns of speech previously modelled on the speech of aduls are slowly eroded by patterns of speech by their peer group
They need to be seen as modern
They need to establish themselves as different
Ignacio Martinez - Teen Speak
Observed that teenagers use negatives more frequently than adults. No way, nope, nah, dunno. While their language can be seen as more negative, it can also be seen as more direct.
William Labov - New York and Rhoticity
Rhoticity refers to whether the /r/ sound is pronounced in a post-vocalic position
When the /r/ sound after a vowel sound such as in the words car, park, warm, teacher, clear
When the /r/ sound is pronounced clearly, linguists refer to this as a rhotic accent
Labov wanted to see whether the rhotic accent was linked to class. He called his paper the social stratification of english in New York department stores
Social stratification - the way in which our society ranks people in a hierarchy based on wealth, income and class.
The method: In each store he approached a member of staff and asked for something that he knew was on the fourth floor. By doing so he would get a response from the member of staff that would have two potential examples of rhoticity. He would pretend that he had not heard the staff correctly so they would repeat fourth floor giving Labov a total of four instances of potential rhoticity.
Saks (high end store) - rhoticity was more noticeable
Macy’s (in the middle) - staff were more likely to over-pronounce the /r/ sound when they repeated ‘fourth floor’ a second time as they were more self aware of their language use and therefore it can be a conscious choice.
Klein’s (low end store) - rhoticity was not very noticeable
William Labov - Martha’s vineyard study
The island has a relatively small population but receives a large number of summer visitors which is not popular with the local population.
Labov examined the shift int the phonetic position of dipthongs /ay/ and /aw/ and the subsequent phonetic variables. Typically, the inhabitants centralised these wounds however, the fishermen who lived on the island used more non-standard forms of these variables and those in the younger age group, a lot of whom had left the island for college, also used these non-standard forms.
The local population wished to dissociate themselves from the summer visitors and did this by using the more centralised pronunciation.
Their speech style implied that they favours the more traditional values and practices associated with the island and this was reflected in their speech style.
